FILM REVIEW

FILM REVIEW; Life Is Fast and Shocking for Pulp Fiction Characters (and Their Dogs Would Agree)

Published: March 30, 2001

''Amores Perros'' was shown as part of last year's New York Film Festival. Following are excerpts from Elvis Mitchell's review, which appeared in The New York Times on Oct. 5. The film -- in Spanish, with English subtitles -- opens today in Manhattan.

When a director shifts gears as often as does Alejandro González Iñárritu, the man behind the emotionally rich debut film ''Amores Perros,'' you may wonder if he knows what he wants. He does, and this film is satisfying in many ways.

He is unashamed to immerse this tough-minded, episodic film noir in freshets of melodrama. Significantly, he knows the minute difference between being unashamed and being shameless, and because he knows how to keep things hopping -- working from an intricate script by Guillermo Arriaga that has a novelistic texture -- we watch a man with immaculate control of the medium.

The picture begins with a car chase through the streets of a Mexican city; there's a bleeding dog in the back seat, which certainly sounds shameless. Like everything else in ''Amores,'' a film in which nothing is what it seems, this is the kind of genre touch that Mr. González Iñárritu expands into something far more haunting.

The velocity of this first scene -- in which Octavio (Gael García Bernal, an actor with a wonderfully expressive face) drives his wounded dog to a veterinarian while fleeing revenge-crazed gunmen -- may seem like something out of a silent film. But it still has a literal and emotional impact that knocks the breath out of you. This may be one of the first art films to come out of Mexico since Buñuel worked there, and ''Amores'' has traces of Buñuel's romantic absurdism.

The setup of the stories -- and the car wreck at the center of the picture, an accident that changes the lives of all of the principal characters -- will inspire comparisons to ''Pulp Fiction.'' While ''Amores'' is often playful, it is certainly not glib; it's full of the heartbreak found in corridas, featuring an almost mythological suffering that owes much to the traditions of Mexico, with characters trapped in the undertow of Fate.

Many of the narrative details feel like loving gestures from a storyteller proud of the weight of folklore and of his story. The violence is fast and shocking: a shooting in a restaurant ends with blood dribbling onto a hot griddle, an image that could be a metaphor for the overheated emotions of the film.

Each of the film's three stories catches its characters at different times in their lives: the beginning, the middle and the end. In the first, ''Octavio and Susana,'' Octavio is in love with his thug-of-a-brother's wife, Susana (Vanessa Bauche). We're introduced to Susana as she walks distractedly down the street wearing a backpack and a schoolgirl's uniform. She rushes into the house and picks up her crying infant son, complaining to her mother-in-law that she has a math final to study for. Octavio stares longingly at her, and he's right: she is too good for his brother. But they're all kids scrambling for each other's attention.

''Amores Perros,'' though it has an earthier meaning, could be translated as ''Love's a Dog,'' and dogs play a big part in the story. Octavio ends up putting his dog, Cofi, on the dogfighting circuit after Cofi is attacked by a fighter's pit bull and triumphs. The unremitting brutality of the dogfights, in which the animals slam into each other and the sickening thud of their bodies is amplified, is something that has to be noted.

The sight of the dogs' bodies after the fights, fur matted with blood, sprawled on the concrete, will send a chill through even the most distanced viewers. (The canine carcasses look astonishingly real, though a tag at the end assures us that no animals were harmed in the making of the picture.) Dog lovers may be put off entirely by the fights.

A dog is an important element of ''Daniel and Valeria,'' the story of a new relationship that curdles as it plays out. The middle-aged Daniel (Alvaro Guerrero) has left his wife and daughter and moved into a love nest with Valeria (Goya Toledo), who can best be described as a spokesmodel; a towering billboard shot of her perfume ad can be seen across the street from their new place.

Like all the stories, this one teases us with a trick opening before moving into a vignette that almost feels like an urban legend. Valeria's Lhasa apso dives into a hole in the floor, and we can hear the trapped dog scurrying back and forth and imagine the vermin feasting on its body. Valeria is in a wheelchair -- her car was struck by Octavio's, leaving her with a horribly damaged leg -- and her inability to move and her wounded vanity change her behavior.

''Amores'' feels like the first classic of the new decade, with sequences that will probably make their way into history. The picture has the crowded humidity of a tele-novela, but Mr. González Iñárritu doesn't linger over the soap-operaish aspects. They're part of the fabric, an emotional tug that sends the characters to places they don't belong, though they know better.

As the last section, ''El Chivo and Maru,'' unfolds, a devoted revolutionary turned street rat and assassin (the incredible Emilio Echevarria) who lives with his pack of dogs, seems to learn a lesson about not submitting to one's impulses. An unforgettable mark-of-Cain subplot, in more ways than one, arrives out of nowhere to deepen the hurt.

It's rare that a director can enter films with this much verve and emotional understanding. Mr. González Iñárritu loves actors, and his cast brings so many different levels of feeling to the picture that the epic length goes by quickly. ''Amores Perros'' vaults onto the screen, intoxicated by the power of filmmaking -- speeded-up movement and tricked-up cuts that convey a shallow mastery of craft -- but evolving into a grown-up love of narrative. In his very first film Mr. González Iñárritu makes the kind of journey some directors don't, or can't, travel in an entire career.